Thin panels are regularly used in construction and carpentry, as for counter tops, wall paneling and the like. These panels are typically made of wood, plastic laminate, cardboard, metal, or other strong material. Cutting of the panels to the desired shape and size is usually necessary in each use of the paneling, as for instance in sizing a plastic laminate to fit a countertop. This job requires fast, accurate, neat cutting of the panels at the job site, with the cutting usually being performed by a router, circular saw, jig saw or similar tool. Various cutting guides have been proposed for this purpose and are well known in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,450,001 to Fortune discloses a cutting guide for guiding a router over a work piece in a straight line. This guide design would allow for relatively straight and neat cutting under certain conditions, but it does have some limitations. For example, in order to be effective, the guide would necessarily need to be longer than the desired cut. If the guide were not longer than the cut, the limits of the guide would eventually be reached and the workpiece would need to be released from the guide and re-adjusted before cutting could be resumed. This would require additional time, and could introduce inaccuracies into the cutting process if the piece were not properly re-aligned between cuts. To the extent that the guide must be long to be effective, it also becomes less portable. Portability of the cutting guide is important since cutting must be done at the job site, and preferably at a particular work location within the job site area. Another cutting guide is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,904,109 to Wendorf, which provides a guide that is readily portable and can cut various shapes and sizes. However, this guide is more readily used for cutting circles, arcs, and the like. To use it for cutting a straight line would be quite slow since it would be necessary to move the guide bars for each cut and re-align them for accuracy. Further, this guide provides no support for the workpiece, but simply rests on the upper surface thereof. Providing a support surface for the workpiece is important for stability of the work and also to help prevent accidentally cutting through and damaging a surface beneath the workpiece.
There are other prior art cutting guides, many of which are uniquely designed to permit a specific function to be performed on a workpiece. However, these guides often require complex supports and guides for aligning workpieces with the cutting tools.
Some other examples of prior art cutting guides include Bailey U.S. Pat. No. 3,509,923; O'Meara U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,159; Gilfry U.S. Pat. No. 3,099,299; and Peterson et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,523.